I Admit that I'm Weird

My friend Lisa Golem shared this on Facebook. I love it so I posted it on my FB with the following comment:
"I'm not weird. There's a very normal guy inside fighting to get out. But I've developed some very good defensive mechanisms that are working at least for now."

But let's talk seriously about being weird.

I tried being normal and more or less succeeded in High School. My goal was to be accepted by the group and to have a few closer friends and I succeeded in that. I found a few roles that I could fill such as Science Guy, Chess Player, Ping Pong Player, 1st Trumpet in the School Band, Class Clown, Christian Guy, etc. I did OK. It was kind of nerve wracking keeping these roles going but they helped me achieve my goal of acceptance.

In 1968, finishing Grade 13, I was looking for my next set of roles. I joined the Revolution. Smoked some hash, started hanging around with Hippies and Freaks (those are synonyms, sort of what the Straights called us and what we called ourselves). I started learning some new roles such as Intellectual Reader, Long Hair, Blues Listener, Acid Head, Hitchhiker, Cool Dresser, Street Theatre Guy, Small Time Dealer, etc. Again I found the acceptance and friends I was looking for and the roles were more freeing and fun than my former High School roles. We Freaks had a strong value of individualism and self expression. We said, "Do your own thing," and we used the expression of "far out" to express approval of something that wasn't "in."

But a role is a role and if the goal is acceptance by the group, there is tension and nerve wrackingness.To the extent that one is following a role, even a self-chosen one, one tends to be isolated, first from yourself and then from others.

At this point - about 1972 - I began to get more desperate in my search for authenticity. I sought out people on the fringes of society. I read books about madness and mysticism and wondered if I would have to go mad in order to find myself and my place in the world. I saw a play called Pilk's Madhouse. One of the lines in the play asks, "Who is real in this house of mirrors?"

more to come...

My Review of A Man in Full by Tom Wolfe

I can't believe I ate the whole thing! 740 pages of novel. In about 2 weeks. I don't read many novels and I start way more than I finish. But this one grabbed me.



I have wanted to read another Tom Wolfe novel ever since I read The Electric Acid Kool Aid Test in 1970. That novel was about the "Merry Pranksters" who rode a day glo painted bus across America holding  happenings in which they served Kool Aid laced with LSD. Wolfe's book helped explain to me why I was doing acid at the time. And I needed the explaining, believe me. Way back then, that novel, hit me between the eyes! This one doesn't hit me between the eyes, but it definitely grabbed me by the shoulder.

A few years ago, I tried his novel, Bonfire of the Vanities but it didn't grab me.

A reviewer from goodreads summarizes the book:

A Man in Full

by Tom Wolfe

 3.67  ·   rating details  ·  6,203 ratings  ·  463 reviews

The setting is Atlanta, Georgia — a racially mixed, late-century boomtown full of fresh wealth and wily politicians. The protagonist is Charles Croker, once a college football star, now a late-middle-aged Atlanta conglomerate king whose outsize ego has at last hit up against reality. Charlie has a 29,000 acre quail-shooting plantation, a young and demanding second wife, and a half-empty office complex with a staggering load of debt.

Meanwhile, Conrad Hensley, idealistic young father of two, is laid off from his job at the Croker Global Foods warehouse near Oakland and finds himself spiraling into the lower depths of the American legal system.

And back in Atlanta, when star Georgia Tech running back Fareek “the Canon” Fanon, a homegrown product of the city’s slums, is accused of date-raping the daughter of a pillar of the white establishment, upscale black lawyer Roger White II is asked to represent Fanon and help keep the city’s delicate racial balance from blowing sky-high.

Networks of illegal Asian immigrants crisscrossing the continent, daily life behind bars, shady real estate syndicates — Wolfe shows us contemporary America with all the verve, wit, and insight that have made him our most admired novelist. Charlie Croker’s deliverance from his tribulations provides an unforgettable denouement to the most widely awaited, hilarious and telling novel America has seen in ages — Tom Wolfe’s most outstanding achievement to date.

The thing that grabbed me about this novel was his depiction of male egos in scramble, fight and tear each other to pieces in search of money, power, status, sex. The scrambles take place at 3 levels of society: among the rich, the middle class and among the inmates of a prison. It's the same brutal game, no matter what level it's being played at.

The "unforgettable denouement" of the book - I had to look the word up: it means "the final part of a narrative in which matters are explained or resolved" - involves looking to God for the answers. But the God who is looked to is Zeus and the avenue of looking is via the ancient Roman Stoic philosophers. On one level, the ending is kind of silly and unbelievable. But it makes you ask, "If the Stoics don't have the answer for the out of control ego, who does?"

Meeting Laura

 Met Jon's girlfriend, Laura. Took them out for dinner to a Thai place that Jon picked. The food was delicious.
Interestingly, as I was looking over the menu, Jon commented, "My dad is a very adventurous person but not with food." That's true.
Jon asked me to keep the conversation light and noncontroversial. I did. The older child's plea is always, "Please don't embarass me." I'm sure I didn't. We were all very charming, especially Laura. Enjoyed seeing Shams again, too. Jon has wonderful friends.

 Experimenting with the Night Portrait setting on my camera. Must get better control before I go to Israel in October.